Two great books, and a chance to win a free DeLorean

Commander Harken: Seems odd you’d name your ship after a battle you were on the wrong side of.Captain Reynolds: May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one.

That’s all I feel like saying on the subject of the recall election right now.

* * *

There are two things happening this week that all proper geeks should be aware of.

First off, Redshirts, is hitting the shelves.

I know, I know…. you can’t really judge a book by its cover. In my opinion, if you’re going to judge, you should do it by the blurbs on the back:

(Click to Embiggen.)

As I mentioned on the blog a couple months back, I got an early read of the book early on this year. As a result, I ended up laughing my ass off at a local restaurant, while everyone stared at me like I was a crazy person. Which is fair enough, I suppose.

If you’re interested, you can read the review I wrote, including the bit where I threaten Scalzi with violence, over here.

The second piece of vital geek news today is the fact that Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, went on sale in paperback this week.

Now this would be news enough by itself, because honestly, Ready Player One was probably the best book I read last year. (And I read a lot.)

But no, the REAL news is that to celebrate the paperback release, Ernest is giving away a DeLorean. Which is somehow manages to be the coolest AND the geekiest promotional thing that I’ve ever run into.

(Seriously, he’s giving away a DeLorean.)

How can you win it? Well, he’s hidden clues in his book. You find the clues, you play some games, you can win his sweet ride.

I’ll also mention, just as an aside, that both John Scalzi and Ernest Cline were very cool about donating stuff to Worldbuilders last year. So if you were right on the edge, and just needed one more reason to rush out and buy their books, there it is…

Those are some tasty looking blurbs. You, Hill and Grossman are three of my favorite writers right now. If it’s good enough to get the lot of you writing blurbs for the cover it must be worthy of a look.

That contest is brilliant. One hundred percent fitting to the nature of the book.

Being from the UK, I have to say I worry about US politics a lot more than I used to, but great use of the quote!

I wonder if you could spare 5 minutes to help me understand publishing. As I value your opinion, and need a book to read on the train tonight, I got all excited to see 2 books reviewed by you in today’s blog, and instantly went to Amazon to try to get them for my Kindle. Ready Player One was there, but Redshirts has a release date of November 15th. Oh well I thought, I’ll just read RP1 today, and get Redshirts in a bookshop this weekend. Imagine my surprise when I discover on John Scalzi’s blog that the hardcover isn’t out till then either! Which is a long winded (read “British”) way of building up to my question. Is it normal for books to be so delayed between release in the US & UK? I know we are separated by a common language in many ways, but 5 months seems a long time.

Yours curiously,
James
P.S. If you need someone to do the US > UK translation of book 3 so that we don’t have to wait so long, just let me know ;o)

Question: Are the books written in really advanced english where also people with english as mothertounge have difficulties to read it? ‘Cause I would love to buy the books, but I’m afraid with german as my first language to miss the funny stuff…

btw. I infected 3 people with Name of the Wind last month and I’m going on annoying poeple with it, so they read and love it :)

I hesitated on buying Ready Player One because I read some reviews that really trashed it. They said it was just the author cramming as many references to the ’80s as he could into a book so that you’d think, “Hey, I remember that!” and buy it, then realize it what it was later and be disappointed.

I couldn’t disagree more. Ended up getting it after reading the first chapter in the bookstore and I loved it. It does exactly what that sort of book should, provided a nice escape into a fictional world that ate away some hours and left me daydreaming about living in that sort of world. So in this case, don’t listen to the haters.

I have almost stopped physically reading books at this point since listening to them allows me to still run/ do crafty stuff *at the same time* folks. So when I went a lookin’ on Audible yesterday for a new book I saw Redshirts. I not only looked at the author but who actually reads the book. And there he was: Wil Wheaton. So I bought it, because he read Ready Player One as well and both he and the book were awesomesauce. Also the guy that reads The Kingkiller Chronicles, Nick Podehl is amazing. Consequently, I never know how anything is spelled in any book, but I *do* know how it is pronounced.

I loved Nick Podehl’s reading of KKC. It was amazing. I’d actually love to get him to sign a copy of the audio version – does he go to cons by any chance? LOL

Although I still have an affinity to actually reading a book. If its really good on audio I’ll sometimes read it in print afterward. But I agree – Audiobooks are fun and good for at work or in the car.

Just sucks when you get a horrible reader. I’ve been listening to Sword of Truth on audio and whoever reads Stone of Tears and Blood of The Fold are in competition for worst audio reader of all time.

Both of these books are available on Audible and both are read by Wil Wheaton. I’m about 75% through Redshirts right now and I can’t tell you how much better this story is when it’s read to you by Wesley Crusher. Great recommendation, Pat!

Unions spent 4 million to get Falk nominated on the Dem side, and lost to Barrett. They then spent further millions on Barrett both in terms of cash and in staffing, and lost to Walker. Worst case, the spending difference was 1.75 to 1, and that’s the absolute high end of what the spread could have possibly been.

All of that ephemera aside, if people weren’t similarly bemoaning the inequities of campaign finance when Obama was outspending McCain by a legit 2+ to 1 back in ’08, it’s a little late to start that particular train up now that the financial tide is turning the other way.

As a PS to Pat: This is probably why non-political sites shouldn’t start up political topics: they tend to suck all of the rest of the oxygen out of the room and end up being a constant static in the background.

Sigh. Walker’s spent 30 million. Fact. Barrett’s spent in the high 3, so I’m willing to round that up to 4. Fact. I’d posts links to prove the point, but on the last blog I posted several links to prove the point and it never got posted, it just told me it was held up in moderation, but it’s really, really easy to search.

Sigh. AFSCME, SEIU, and the NEA spent 21 million. Funny how these “facts” conveniently ignore the spending of the groups that organized the recall.

Also curious as to why Barrett could only raise 4 million versus Walker’s 32 million? Perhaps the losing side was also the wrong side? That’s what the landslide Walker victory tells me. And yes it was a landslide victory. Sorry.

A DeLorean? That would be great, if, say, I could shrink it down and fit it in my pocket instead of having to find a parking space. Can it do that? I didn’t see it mentioned in the contest descriptions.

I’m a teacher grading high school AP US History final research papers (they’re on the order of twenty to thirty pages, it’s a rather daunting task), and one of my students put in a dedication page, which says: To Patrick Rothfuss and Kvothe Kingkiller, for teaching me to question my heroes and love them anyway